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#831
6th March 2021, 05:30 AM
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 "Amazon Studios is bringing three of its 2021 Oscar contenders to the The Criterion Collection - Darius Marder’s “Sound of Metal,” Regina King’s “One Night in Miami,” and Garrett Bradley’s “Time.” The latter two will arrive on Criterion later this year, while “Sound of Metal” will bow in 2022"
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty  |
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#832
17th March 2021, 11:10 AM
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'The Human Condition' (1959) - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for 3 disc Blu-Ray $47.96 and 4 disc DVD $63.96 Release date: June 8 "This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best." Special features:
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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#833
17th March 2021, 11:15 AM
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'Streetwise / Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell' - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for Blu-Ray $31.96 and DVD $23.96 Release date: June 15 "Streetwise (1984) Seattle, 1983. Taking their camera to the streets of what was supposedly America’s most livable city, filmmaker Martin Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall set out to tell the stories of those society had left behind: homeless and runaway teenagers living on the city’s margins. Born from a Life magazine exposé by Mark and McCall, Streetwise follows an unforgettable group of at-risk children—including iron-willed fourteen-year-old Tiny, who would become the project’s most haunting and enduring figure, along with the pugnacious yet resourceful Rat and the affable drifter DeWayne—who, driven from their broken homes, survive by hustling, panhandling, and dumpster diving. Granted remarkable access to their world, the filmmakers craft a devastatingly frank, nonjudgmental portrait of lost youth growing up far too soon in a world that has failed them. Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell (2016) In Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, director Martin Bell and photographer Mary Ellen Mark draw on their thirty-year relationship with one of the most indelible subjects of Streetwise. Now a forty-four-year-old mother of ten, Erin Blackwell, a.k.a. Tiny, reflects with Mark on the journey they’ve experienced together, from Blackwell’s battles with addiction to her regrets to her dreams for her own children, even as she sees them being pulled down the same path of drugs and desperation that she was. Interweaving three decades’ worth of Mark’s photographs and footage that includes previously unseen outtakes from Streetwise, this is a heartrending, deeply empathetic portrait of a family struggling to break free of the cycle of trauma, as well as a summation of the life’s work of Mark, an irreplaceable artistic voice." 
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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#834
17th March 2021, 11:20 AM
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'The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs' - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for 2 disc Blu-Ray $39.96 and 3 disc DVD $31.96 Release date: June 22 "Ethnic Notions (1986) Marlon Riggs brings viewers face-to-face with the insidious images that have shaped America’s racial mythologies, in his first major work, a brilliant and disturbing deconstruction of the ways in which anti-Black stereotypes have permeated nearly every aspect of popular culture. Through razor-sharp historical analysis including interviews with historians and folklore scholars, powerfully deployed imagery, and narration by actor Esther Rolle, Ethnic Notions illuminates, with devastating clarity, how dehumanizing caricatures of Black people—seen everywhere from children’s books to films to household products—have been used to uphold white supremacy and to justify slavery, segregation, and the continuing oppression of African Americans. In its refusal to look away from racism’s ugliest manifestations, this Emmy-winning documentary has become an essential text for understanding the origins of American racial violence. Tongues Untied (1989) Made, in Marlon Riggs’s own words, to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” this radical blend of documentary and performance defies the stigmas surrounding Black gay sexuality in the belief that, as long as shame prevails, liberation will never be possible. Through music and dance, words and poetry by such pathbreaking writers as Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam—and by turns candid, humorous, and heartbreaking interviews with queer African American men—Tongues Untied gives voice to what it means to live as an outsider in both a Black community rife with homophobia and a largely white gay subculture poisoned by racism. A lightning rod in the conservative culture wars of the 1980s that incited a right-wing furor over public funding for the arts, the film has lost none of its resonance in its unapologetic, life-affirming declaration that “Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.” Affirmations (1990) Marlon Riggs expresses the hopes, dreams, and desires of gay Black men in this ode to queer African American empowerment. Built around outtakes of interview and protest footage from Tongues Untied, Affirmations begins as a candid, sex-positive confessional about first-time penetration and evolves into a rousing chorus of calls for freedom, recognition, and inclusion. Anthem (1991) “Pervert the language.” Made at a time when Marlon Riggs was three years into living with HIV and the motto “Silence=Death” was the queer community’s defiant response to the antigay policies of the Reagan era, this experimental music video employs a mix of poetry, African beats, and provocative imagery—sexual, political, and religious—in order to challenge and redefine prevailing images of Black masculinity. Led by the liberated dancing of the filmmaker himself, Anthem is a bold vision of queer revolution, proclaiming “Every time we kiss we confirm the new world coming.” Color Adjustment (1992) What does the American dream look like? Where do Black Americans fit into it? And what is television’s role in shaping our views of racial progress and the idealized American family? Picking up where the groundbreaking Ethnic Notions left off, this pioneering work of media studies by Marlon Riggs presents a complicated, challenging, and nuanced view of evolving racial attitudes as reflected in popular programs such as Amos ’n’ Andy, Julia, All in the Family, Good Times, Roots, and The Cosby Show. Narrated by Ruby Dee and featuring interviews with actors Diahann Carroll, Tim Reid, and Esther Rolle, African American historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., and producer Norman Lear, among others, Color Adjustment looks beyond the whitewashed, middle-class mythologies peddled by prime-time entertainment to track the ways in which Black Americans have been assimilated into a new but no less harmful racial narrative. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret) (1993) Through music, poetry, and courageous self-disclosure, five HIV-positive gay Black men (among them poet and performance artist Assotto Saint) discuss their individual confrontations with AIDS, illuminating their journeys through the fear, shame, and stigma that accompanied the disease at the height of the epidemic toward healing, acceptance, and truth. In Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret), director Marlon Riggs tells stories of self-transformation in which a once unmentionable “affliction” is forged into a tool of personal and communal empowerment. Black Is...Black Ain’t (1995) Made with an urgency imparted by the knowledge that he was nearing the end of his life, Marlon Riggs’s final film—completed after his death of AIDS by a group of his devoted collaborators—is a wide-ranging consideration of a question that had long been central to his work: What does it mean to be Black? Using his mother’s gumbo recipe as a metaphor for the diversity of the African American experience, Riggs travels the country, seeking insights from leading thinkers like Angela Davis, Henry Louis Gates Jr., bell hooks, and Barbara Smith as well as ordinary people—young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight—all grappling with the numerous, often contested definitions of Blackness that have shaped their lives. Punctuated by footage of a dying Riggs directing his crew and delivering parting wisdom from his hospital bed, Black Is . . . Black Ain’t breaks down the divides of class, colorism, patriarchy, and homophobia as it issues a stirring appeal for unity." 
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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#835
17th March 2021, 11:23 AM
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'Visions Of Eight' (1973) - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for Blu-Ray $31.96 and DVD $23.96 Release date: June 22 "In Munich in 1972, eight renowned filmmakers each brought their singular artistry to the spectacle of the Olympic Games—the joy and pain of competition, the kinetic thrill of bodies in motion—for an aesthetically adventurous sports film unlike any other. Made to document the Olympic Summer Games—an event that was ultimately overshadowed by the tragedy of a terrorist attack—Visions of Eight features contributions from Miloš Forman, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch, Juri Ozerov, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, John Schlesinger, and Mai Zetterling, each given carte blanche to create a short focusing on any aspect of the Games that captured his or her imagination. The resulting films—ranging from the arresting abstraction of Penn’s pure cinema study of pole-vaulters to the playful irreverence of Forman’s musical take on the decathlon to Schlesinger’s haunting portrait of the single-minded solitude of a marathon runner—are triumphs of personal, poetic vision applied to one of the pinnacles of human achievement." Special Features:
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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#836
17th March 2021, 11:26 AM
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'Pariah' (2011) - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for Blu-Ray $31.96 and DVD $23.96 Release date: June 29 "The path to living as one’s authentic self is paved with trials and tribulations in this revelatory, assured feature debut by Dee Rees—the all-too-rare coming-of-age tale to honestly represent the experiences of queer Black women. Grounded in the fine-grained specificity and deft characterizations of Rees’s script and built around a beautifully layered performance from Adepero Oduye, Pariah follows Brooklyn teenager Alike, who is dealing with the emotional minefields of both first love and heartache and the disapproval of her family as she navigates the expression of her gender and sexual identities within a system that does not make space for them. Achieving an aching intimacy with its subject through the expressive cinematography of Bradford Young, this deeply felt portrait finds strength in vulnerability and liberation in letting go." Special Features:
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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#837
17th March 2021, 11:31 AM
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'Pickup On South Street' (1953) - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for Blu-Ray $31.96 and DVD $23.96 Release date: June 29 "Petty crook Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) has his eyes fixed on the big score. When the cocky three-time convict picks the pocketbook of unsuspecting Candy (Jean Peters), he finds a more spectacular haul than he could have imagined: a strip of microfilm bearing confidential U.S. information. Tailed by manipulative Feds and the unwitting courier’s Communist puppeteers, Skip and Candy find themselves in a precarious gambit that pits greed against redemption, right against Red, and passion against self-preservation. With its dazzling cast and writer-director Samuel Fuller’s signature hard-boiled repartee and raw energy, Pickup on South Street is a true film noir classic by one of America’s most passionate cinematic craftspeople." Special Features:
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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#838
25th March 2021, 11:31 AM
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| Special offer: 2 Criterion Blu-rays for £25 CHOOSE FROM OVER 100 TITLES The Criterion Collection is dedicated to publishing important classic and contemporary films from around the world in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements. Pick from a huge selection of Criterion titles including many recent releases in this 2 for £25 offer. This offer is only available for customers based in the UK. The Reaper Man@Cult Labs likes this.
__________________ " I have seen trees that look like tortured souls" |
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#839
15th April 2021, 09:41 PM
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'Deep Cover' (1992) - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for Blu-Ray $31.96 and DVD $23.96 Release date: July 13 "Film noir hits the mean streets of 1990s Los Angeles in this stylish and subversive underworld odyssey from veteran actor-director Bill Duke. Laurence Fishburne stars as Russell Stevens/John Hull, a police officer who goes undercover as the partner of a dangerously ambitious cocaine trafficker (Jeff Goldblum) in order to infiltrate and bring down a powerful Latin American drug ring operating in LA. But the further Stevens descends into this ruthless world of money, violence, and power, the more disillusioned he becomes—and the harder to make out the line between right and wrong, crime and justice. Steeped in shadowy, neon-soaked atmosphere and featuring Dr. Dre’s debut solo single, this unsung gem of the nineties’ Black cinema explosion delivers a riveting character study and sleek action thrills alongside a furious moral indictment of America and the devastating failures of the war on drugs." Special Features:
 Paul@TheOverlook and The Reaper Man@Cult Labs like this.
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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#840
15th April 2021, 09:44 PM
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'Working Girls' (1986) - Pre-order available from Criterion direct for Blu-Ray $31.96 and DVD $23.96 Release date: July 13 "Sex work is portrayed with radical nonjudgment in Lizzie Borden’s immersive, richly detailed look at the rhythms and rituals of society’s most stigmatized profession. Inspired by the experiences of the sex workers Borden met while making her underground feminist landmark Born in Flames, Working Girls reveals the textures of a day in the life of Molly (Louise Smith), a photographer working part-time in a Manhattan brothel, as she juggles a steady stream of clients, balances nurturing relationships with her coworkers with the demands of an ambitious madam, and above all fights to maintain her sense of self in a business in which the line between the personal and the professional is all too easily blurred. In viewing prostitution through the lens of labor, Borden boldly desensationalizes the subject, offering an empathetic, humanizing, often humorous depiction of women for whom this work is just another day at the office." Special Features:
__________________ People try to put us down Just because we get around Golly, Gee! it's wrong to be so guilty |
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